


Haunt

by drizzlydaze, Rohnoc



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: 1970s, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Chess, Gen, Ghosts, M/M, Murder Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 18:38:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3299720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drizzlydaze/pseuds/drizzlydaze, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rohnoc/pseuds/Rohnoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the trail of his missing sister, private detective Charles Xavier comes to the small town of Lockheed. It's just his luck when the murders begin and he finds himself embroiled in a mystery fifty years past. People say it's the ghosts of Grey House come back for revenge, but as Charles knows, there's no such things as ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rohnoc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rohnoc/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Haunt - Art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3312761) by [drizzlydaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drizzlydaze/pseuds/drizzlydaze), [Rohnoc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rohnoc/pseuds/Rohnoc). 



> Do give love to the artist, Rohnoc, at their [Tumblr](http://rohnoc.tumblr.com/private/110433916073/tumblr_njgf3eGkrp1r4aion) or [AO3 art post](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3312761).
> 
> So. It's done! I just don't have the endurance for longfic, so I'm proud that I managed to write a complete one. Enjoy.

****

 

 

 

 

 

 

**I**

He rolled into town with the fog. It overtook him soon enough. The streetlights smeared into yellow blotches that lit the thick grey fog more than they lit the way. A chill stole up the windows. There were, as far as he could tell, no other cars about. He could have been in a forest of will-o’-wisps for all he could tell of a town. Feeling put off by the fog, he pulled up at the first likely looking spot, which had the dark shape of a sign hanging from a post out front.

The door opened easily, so it was at least a public establishment. He stumbled into warmth and light, the faint smell of pinecones. The lobby was all polished wood. Three sunken armchairs circled a small coffee table, a waiting area. There was a statuette of a dragon on the reception desk, and a sign that said _Ariel Inn_ hanging above.

“A week, for now,” Charles said at the desk, though he suspected he would be waiting far longer.

The receptionist looked mildly surprised. Maybe, probably, the town was more of a pit stop than anything. “Xavier, you said? Charles Xavier?”

He smiled tiredly. “I’m afraid so.”

“Well, that’s just—I’m a big fan, Mr Xavier, a real big fan. Pryde’s the name. Carmen Pryde.” Pryde leaned in, his receding hairline gleaming under the light. “What’s this old place got your attention?”

“Lockheed’s a lovely town.”

Pryde didn’t seem too put off; if anything, he looked even more intrigued. “I never thought I’d see the day MacTaggert ask a man to do her work.”

“I assure you, Mr Pryde, that the police didn’t ask me here. Not everything in my life has to do with work,” he said. “And, well, I was hoping to find a good rest here.”

“That you’ll get; we’re the best place in town,” Pryde said as he fumbled with something below his desk. He slid a curling newspaper cutout across the counter, his silver ring clicking against the wood. The article was dated three months back—the Cansford Cutthroat, as the press had called it. “Would you sign—?”

Charles did so and was at last given a key and a room. The door to his room was round and wooden, and had _The Honey Room_ inscribed on it in curly marmalade letters. Inside, the décor, at a sweep, lived up to its namesake—warmly orange and cozy, pleasing enough to warrant keener appreciation. But he was tired, and right then the most important feature of the room was the bed in the corner.

Sometime in the night, he was roused by a sharp, sweet smell. It cleared his sinuses almost painfully. His eyes opened just a slice, though he was not even half-awake, and he saw something very white amid the blackness of his room. With great, hazy effort, he lifted his head a little bit and opened his eyes a little more, and the bright whiteness formed up into a collection of little white flowers he hadn’t noticed before. _Oh_ , he thought.

When morning came and the light woke him proper (he had not bothered to close the curtains), Charles spent several moments lying on his side, staring blankly at the room. On the far wall were the door, several coat hangers, and the painting of a horse; in the foreground, the smooth empty top of his bedside table.

 

**II**

There were three other people at breakfast, but they were all just passing through. He observed them anyway, just to be sure: a young couple just settling into their marriage when they were both used to being quite strikingly independent; and a gambling man on his way to his nephew’s ( _son’s? No, nephew’s_ ) graduation.

The eggs were lovely.

With nothing on the breakfasting people, he flipped through the local paper, thoughtfully laid out in a fan on an end table. He looked at the classifieds most closely, but there was nothing of note.

“I thought the obits would be more your area, Mr Xavier.”

He looked up with a smile. It was a brown-haired woman in a flower-print apron. She had a silver wedding band on her left hand. “On the contrary, Mrs Pryde, it’s my job to avoid them.”

“And you sure do it fine. All done?” Her husband’s face, he thought, had been like a crumpled paper that someone had tried to smooth out—without subtlety, every change and crease leaping out; Mrs Pryde’s face had too much of a smile for that. Her tells were in her fidgets, the kind of busy movement that might have made the fresh yellow stain on the bottom of her apron, or the other older discolorations patching the fabric.

He said, “It was excellent, thank you.”

She cleared his plate. “No coffee for you?”

“I prefer tea. None here, unfortunately. It’s an obstacle I find myself encountering everywhere I go.”

“We have Lipton,” she said, glancing over at the open cabinet, apparently unaware that she was harbouring the very worst of tea offenses. “For you—some Earl Grey, English Breakfast.”

“That’s not tea,” Charles said, the consummate educator, and wondered if it would be offensive, or at least quite futile, to ask if there was a place in town he could get a decent cup. “I’m afraid I’m quite criminally English.” Before she could ask the old citizenship question, he continued, “Do you perhaps have a map of the area I could use? I’m also quite the tourist.”

Her right index finger was slowly rubbing the side of a tall empty glass—the gambler’s, he recognised from the milk stains. “Well, there’s nothing much to see here, Mr Xavier, never mind in this darn fog. I’ll give you a map, no problem, so’s you can find your way around, but Lockheed’s a small town. If you want the station—”

“Purely leisure, I assure you.” He had a feeling he’d be saying this a lot.

“Then there’s the lighthouse out yonder, and the dirty old beach,” she said. “A few waterholes here and there. And if you feel like a scare, Mr Xavier, you can try the old Grey House.”

She’d deliberately left that for last. There was a hook there, laid out quite starkly for him to pursue, but he wasn’t interested in ghost stories. The charred estate flashed through his mind, empty and haunted, and he swallowed. “The beach sounds wonderful,” he said instead.

“It’s mostly docks. Fishermen hauling in.”

Check shipping records, he thought. Private yachts, unlikely as that was. Minor infractions with registration. “Sounds busy. Perhaps I’ll go on the seas myself. I used to sail.”

She looked at him and smirked. “You’ll have no luck now. It’s the worst time of year to be out. If there’s a clear day… Well, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

“Leave the hoping to me. If there’s a day, do you think I could rent a yacht?”

“A yacht! The only yacht you’d see round here is Frost’s, and—well, she wouldn’t be out now, anyway. The sea is for fishing, and that’s work, at least right now,” she said. “Build some muddy castles, go up the lighthouse, that’s fine. Spot the dragon, you can do that. Plenty of statues littered round town. It’s where Lockheed gets its name, from the protector dragon.”

It was a mildly interesting, if entirely useless, bit of lore. “I’m sure. Well, I’d better get a move on.”

Mrs Pryde had finished clearing the plates, so he followed her out of the room. She gave him a map and a brochure from under the reception desk. “There’s nothing much,” she said again, and if the statement was almost innocuous the first time, then he now knew that there was very much to know.

“Thank you,” he said, but a metallic crash, possibly from the kitchen, rang over his voice, and Mrs Pryde’s attention snapped away.

“Kitty!” she said, half-exasperated. The help?

He glanced through the brochure and map, but there was, as with the papers, as the Prydes had been strenuously asserting, nothing of note. As he left, planning just to explore, he heard Mrs Pryde say, “Well, least it’s timely. Erik’s back in town.”

It was cool on the edge of cold when he walked outside. The fog was still hanging around. He had his black jacket buttoned all the way up and his navy wool scarf pulled over his mouth; that was more to keep people from recognising him than anything, though there weren’t actually many other people around.

Lockheed, he now observed in the light of day, was a reddish sort of town, with dark accents and black roofs. It looked a lot more posh than he would’ve thought, really—more like a college town. He’d never heard of Lockheed before and, not for the first time, wondered—why here?

He’d no more of a lead than what little was on the slip of paper: the name of the town and its coordinates. No time. No promises. No fingerprints, no proof—but what could he do but follow? No one else would know to use that PO Box. Was he to wait? Or had she left something here for him?

He’d barely wandered for ten minutes when a spire came into view. He paused and crossed the park to get a better look. Seeing the tall rickety tower it grew out from, it could only be—

“Grey House,” someone said. “I see you’ve found it.”

He turned. The voice belonged to a woman with brown hair just skimming her shoulders and equally brown eyes. She was looking up at the house. She knew who he was, of course, so he said, to return the favour, “It’s hard to miss it, Captain MacTaggert.”

Her gaze sharpened. “Someone’s tipped you off already,” she said.

“No, actually,” he said, because he always turned very honest when it would make him look good. “I’m just very clever.”

She let that lie, saying instead, “I’m not even in uniform.” It was a prompt for an explanation, but when he didn’t give one she held out her hand. “Moira MacTaggert.”

He shook it. “Charles Xavier,” he returned, and glanced around at the slowly filling park. “People will talk.”

She didn’t bother looking, just shrugged. “I want to talk, Mr Xavier. I know how you work and I don’t need you sneaking behind our backs to investigate your own case. The state you leave the police in…”

No worse than the state it was in already. But MacTaggert must know that, for all that she endured to hike up to captain. “I’m not here for work,” he said. “Besides, I _am_ a PI. In common parlance, that means the police can mind their own business.”

“I don’t need you sneaking behind our backs,” MacTaggert said again, and clarified, “I’m not asking for your cooperation, just your transparency. I’ll eat my gun if you’re in Lockheed for the sights. I’ve been warned enough about you. Our investigations might even coincide.” She must have a suspicion as to why he was here. An erroneous one, to be sure, but something.

“I have always been gracious to the police,” he said.

She stared at him. She had a formidable stare, very level, very sharp.

“…So far as they deserve it,” he hedged.

“No department across seventeen counties has deserved it, then?”

“You made that number up,” he said, and relented, softening his voice. “I’m not here to stir up trouble. And at least six of those other times, trouble found _me_.”

“Forgive me if I don’t find that particularly comforting,” she said dryly.

“I’m a tourist now,” he said. He looked up at the tower of Grey House again. It wasn’t at all as he had imagined it, not like the mansion the brochure depicted—it wasn’t anything like Graymalkin. It was tall where the estate had been vast, dilapidated from the onset without any of that decaying opulence, more of an overgrown attic than anything. He imagined that when the sun began to set, it would cast a long crooked shadow over the town; even without that, it was impossible to miss, rising above the town like a flame.

MacTaggert, having simply observed him as he observed Grey House, appeared to relent, at least for now. “If you need anything,” she said, “if you see anything, come see us.”

“Well, I could use a good cuppa."

“Xavier.”

“Chess partner?”

She rolled her eyes. He thought he heard her mutter something like, “Not another one.” More loudly, she told him, “Welcome to Lockheed,” and gave him her card.

The two of them had attracted attention, as he’d predicted. As MacTaggert walked off, most of the eyes lingered on him. He felt resigned, but he pretended not to notice and walked on. He kept his head down most of the way; he’d grown quite adept at observing others without looking it, anyway. As he walked farther and farther from the park, he grew invisible again, so people openly talked around him. There were two hot topics of the day: Charles’ own arrival, which he’d expected, and the return of someone called Lehnsherr. That must be the _Erik_ Mrs Pryde had mentioned. Funny, how Mrs Pryde had called him by his first name while everyone else stuck with his last (if they were indeed the same person, but the odds pointed to it); and how Mrs Pryde had sounded friendly about him while the people he passed seemed to regard him not just with respect but with some—well, terror. Like how one might regard a powerful tiger.

He was so wrapped in his thoughts, staring fixedly at the unchanging road beneath his shoes, that he didn’t notice where he was going. He could’ve sworn he had followed the salt breeze in the general direction of the docks—he could’ve sworn, at least, that he hadn’t barrelled straight on—but he suddenly found himself on the road to Grey House.

Blinking, he doubled back. The roads were snaky and confusing at this part of town, made worse by the rows of nondescript buildings lining the sides. Another few turns to rectify this—but somehow he was still heading straight back for the house. He turned back again with renewed focus; but even actively aiming east on the twisting roads, blocked in by blank boarded-up buildings, had him winding back around.

Well. He gave in and went straight to it. He couldn’t deny that the sight of it was arresting.

The house was improbably stacked. It looked like it was comprised mostly of a series of ill-conceived turrets, and so defied conventional architecture that it looked alive, like a great spindly monster on the verge of either pouncing or collapsing in on itself. It was washed in grey, as grey as its namesake, and shrouded still in fog. Every part of it was decayed, from the slumping stonemasonry to the tattered curtains (how much better it would be if the windows were boarded-up; now they only made him feel the house’s oppressive stare). The yellowed grassy area around it could be called a yard from the spurts of rotting wood that demarcated its perimeter. The tallest of these weeds came up to his knees.

Even in the day, with the morning light soft through the clouds and mist, Grey House looked haunted. Somehow its architectural irregularities slanted the soft morning light into harsh, jagged shadows that only grew deeper nearer the ground, ending in the black mouth of the front door. He couldn’t imagine how it must look at night.

Charles had busted his fair share of myths, and had long come to the conclusion that human evil was more frightening than anything superstition could cook up. But this—even standing outside in the light, he felt a cold lump pushing up in his gut. He repeated the familiar mantra that there were no such things as ghosts, and made himself walk forward.

The brochure had said that the front door of the house was barricaded from the inside and that brave souls would have to go in through the windows or the servants’ entrance. But the front door opened at a touch of his hand. Looking down, he saw the charred remains of a thick heavy plank. As the door creaked open, it nudged aside the barricade; whoever had burned it had inexplicably not left by the front door (the barricade would already be pushed aside if he had), and no one else had entered or left by it since. He felt even colder.

He stepped over the threshold.

It was very dark even in the foyer with the open door and looked to be pitch black in the rooms beyond. He moved the charred bits of wood with his foot to stopper the door; but even so, the house was facing the wrong way, and that coupled with the strange architecture thwarted natural light from coming in. Strangely, it was much warmer in the stone house than it was outside. He pulled off his scarf and, after a moment’s hesitation, hung it on one of the dusty coat hooks. In his motion, he noticed something red on the entryway table. It was a torch, looking shiny and new atop the dust-covered counter. He flicked it on and a wide beam of yellow light obligingly lit the room.

A broken barricade. A new torch. Someone had come in recently; and maybe, someone had been preparing for him.

(Was that paranoid? He decided, as he had done for the past eight years, that it was justified. After all, someone had once burned down a house for him.)

The foyer was crumbling and narrow, strangely warm, and entirely unfamiliar. There was none of the luxury of Graymalkin in the cheap wood furniture, ratty mats, though the stone walls were impressive—like someone had moved into a castle and turned its insides into a shack. But suddenly he felt as though he were back in the scorched entry hall of his nightmared memories, surrounded by ash and dread, and he called out, “Raven?”

His voice died in the corridor. Back then, it had echoed through the burnt manor, calling, calling for no one.

There was a set of stairs in front of him, but he turned to the passage on the left instead. There was not a single piece of furniture in the room it led to, not even overhead lights. The spiders had run wild with it, though. The next room was no better, except for a single oval mirror hanging on a wall. The house was cool and silent, like marble. He half-felt packed ash shifting beneath his shoes, half-smelled a waft of bitter smoke—half-imagined walking the halls of Graymalkin again.

As he proceeded from room to room, it got steadily warmer. He resisted unbuttoning his jacket, feeling exposed, until he could no longer take the uncomfortable warmth. He didn’t take it off, though. The warmth wasn’t a comfort; it was weird and unnatural, like someone had started the heating through the house and there was a furnace at the end of this passage of rooms—like something was building up to the end of the rooms—like, quite basically, there was someone else in the house.  

Charles was used to morbid curiosity. Right now, he felt as though it were more ill-advised than the usual—a ridiculous thought, since _the usual_ had him dealing with killers, and the only occupants of this house were ghosts of rumours.

The rooms seemed endless. Then suddenly, as he was reaching the entrance of what he thought might be the last one, he heard a girlish giggle right beside his ear, harsh and sharp in the emptiness. Heart pounding, he swung around, with one hand braced on the open stone door and the other brandishing the torch like a sword. But in the swaying light, he saw only the stone of the wall. He stood there, not daring to move, acutely aware of his exposed back. His breathing sounded very loud in the damp silence. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. Just as he was beginning to convince himself that it had only been the wind whistling its way through the house, he heard it again, unmistakable, sending a chill down his spine—and then suddenly, on the trail of the giggle, the roaring of a flame.

He ran for it—that is, he ran for the fire. It was instinct. The fire was in the next room; from where he was, all he could see was how the room was lit in hot light. As he scrambled over, he tripped over long planks of wood piled over the floor of the room. He landed hard on his hands and knees, the torch flung from his grasp. When he looked up, his face felt the prickling heat of the flame—not just a flame, he saw now, but a whole column of fire rising up from the floor to the ceiling, blinding and blazing. Yet for the inferno, the wood beneath him didn’t light and the ceiling wasn’t charred; the heat was so real, as real as the embers that flaked onto his face, as the sweat dripping down the back of his neck, but there was no smoke. Standing in the centre of the pillar of fire was the dark shape of a girl. He had the terrible sense that she was looking at him, and he couldn’t look away. And then the girl began to smile, her mouth a slice of flame that stretched and stretched until it cut her face—

For a second, everything was silent, like someone had switched off the sound. He could only stare, the corners of his vision painted in the orange glow off the planks on the floor and the red boiling sky of the ceiling; he could only think, _this is a dream._ He’d dreamed of fire so many times before. He allowed himself this moment of reprieve.

Then he saw the girl was now looking past him, over his shoulder like there was someone else right behind him, and he could sense that presence like how he could sense where the girl was looking; and suddenly he felt a cool breath against his right ear and hands pressing into his throat. His rising scream choked off. He finally managed to tear his gaze from the terrible girl and _move_ , struggling and scrabbling, his vision blackening. The fire faded, leaving him in total darkness; for all he knew, the girl was still standing there in shadow, fire-smile gone with the rest. But the hands were still there, unyielding. For the first time, he thought, _ghost_.

He didn’t know how long it went on for. Every moment was an eternity. At some point, he became too weak to struggle against it. And then he was let go.

He gasped and he shook. He couldn’t feel the presence anymore, but he didn’t dare look back, and he didn’t dare stay for a second longer. It should have taken longer than it did for him to recover his breath. Then, fuelled by fear, he ran through the darkness and back to the foyer, which was cast in paleness by a wedge of thin light. He snagged his scarf from the coat hook as he ran out into the yard, into the sun and fog, and he kept on running until his sweat froze in the cool air.

**III**

 

He heard about the murder the next day.

Madelyne Pryor, age 25, death by manual strangulation in a locked room. Nothing stolen—well, just her breath.

He rubbed his own neck, which was unmarked and unbruised.

Perhaps the strangest detail of the case was how her body was mutilated after the fact, cut into till there was more red than flesh. Her face was left unscarred, except that the killer had taken her eyeballs from their sockets and put them a tall glass. He could imagine how they would roll around. There was a red _X_ splitting her mouth in precise slashes.

“What really happened? Or aren’t you allowed to tell?” Mrs Pryde asked him.

“I really don’t know anything about it,” Charles said. “This is the first I’ve heard of it and I doubt I’ll be asked to help. The police can handle it.” Which was something he didn’t often say, but he had a certain respect for the captain, from their brief conversation.

“I can’t think of anybody who’d want to be rid of Maddie, let alone do such terrible things to her body,” Mrs Pryde said, fiddling with her hands. “And to think, I saw her just that morning at the store… A real tragedy, it is. They’d better catch the bastard that did it.” She shook her head. “Strangulation. What a terrible way to go.”

And what fortitude the killer must have. Strangulation was bloodless, but far more than the bullet or raging blows, its brutality lay in unfaltering focus: cold, senseless, absolute. It was a power trip. And now he knew what it was like to be at its mercy.

“Are you alright?” she said, peering at him.

He caught his breath. “Yes,” he said, raspy. He cleared his throat and said, “Yes. The news is just a bit upsetting.”

It was a sunny day. The streets were busier than yesterday, and everyone on them was talking about the murder. Contrary to Mrs Pryde’s comments, he learned that Madelyne Pryor, while not hated, was a bit of an outsider, both by choice and by circumstance. These were mostly on superstitious grounds that Charles found out of place even in a small town like Lockheed; they just weren’t far enough south for that. In any case, the alienation had begun three years ago when Pryor had disappeared from town for a few days. Just when the police had been about to investigate, she’d returned distant and strange, a sudden and complete turnaround from her former socialite self, and had remained so henceforth. In this time, her favourite hideaway had been Grey House.

Maybe the red torch had been hers.

This association with Grey House, combined with the grotesque way her corpse had been treated and the physically impossible nature of the murder, bred stories that she’d been killed by vengeful ghosts. When he heard this, he said loudly, “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no such thing as ghosts.” The gossipers looked startled at the sudden interjection.

All things considered, though, there seemed to be no reason why anyone would want her dead. The gossip mill might be unreliable, but one thing it did was exaggerate. If he heard nothing of motives, then there was something very odd going on.

A detective, he couldn’t help but parse through the mystery. The violence inflicted on the dead body, after a bloodless strangulation, was another puzzler. It spoke of two natures in the killer, a thirst for bloody revenge, balanced with a calculative mind. Passion and callousness, but the killer did have restraint. After all, the act itself had been carried out so coolly; the aftermath was the deliberate release of the berserker. In their everyday manner, the killer would repress that emotionality; it was likely too that the killer would hide all impulses, would seem perfectly ordinary, neither too cold nor too emotional.

“Charles.” He looked up and saw a statue of a dragon—Lockheed, it was. Beside it was a blonde woman dressed all in white, practically sparkling in the sun. Charles didn’t want to be uncouth, but she looked, in a word, like money. “I am Emma Frost.” Her white hands remained at her sides. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“And you, Ms Frost. I’ve heard tales of your yacht.”

She paused. “Call me Emma. I thought Sharon might have mentioned me. Or Brian, it’s just the same.”

Charles did a double take, peering more closely at Emma. Money, indeed. It couldn’t be a coincidence that she, who knew his parents, was living here at Lockheed. “I didn’t see you at the funeral.”

“I was there. It was a large affair, as I recall, so you could well have missed me.”

That was possible. The faces had blurred into a rain-swept blackness after a while. But a blonde woman—he’d been looking out for blondes. He would have remembered.

“It’s interesting, the path you decided to go down,” she said. “Weren’t you set on genetics like your father?” It was impolite of her to ask. The explanation was obvious, the memory painful.

“I was,” Charles said. “As you understand, circumstances change.” He had just finished his undergrad when Graymalkin had been set aflame. Touring the world when his parents had burned and Raven gone missing. “It’s rewarding, really.”

“Really.” She managed to look thoughtful with that smooth, unchanging face. “It would be nice to chat with you later, Charles. Somewhere less crowded, less noisy.”

There was something significant in her tone. He looked around. “I’m sure there’s a coffee shop or somesuch—”

“I’m afraid the week is a busy one for me.”

So they set a time and place for lunch next Wednesday. Charles expected something expensive, but it was a casual affair, somewhere he doubted Emma would frequent. Curious. They said their goodbyes.

All in all, very strange. She’d known his parents, which was surreal enough here. Whatever she had to tell him—about the Xaviers, no doubt—couldn’t be that important, if it could wait a week, but there was something in her voice that suggested something more. Most importantly, how did she know he wasn’t just passing through?

 _The PO Box_ , he thought. Could she have been the one…?

He continued on to the park. The spire of Grey House poked the sky. He sat down at a chess table, the only one right beside yet another dragon statue. He rested his chin on folded hands, thinking. But he couldn’t ponder the mystery of Emma Frost without skirting the Graymalkin fire, and he couldn’t even skirt that without plunging straight into memories he didn’t feel up to reliving. Luckily, a distraction he would now think of timely but later designate as the most effective distraction he’d ever the fortune to meet sat down opposite him and began to set the board.

“Erik Lehnsherr,” the man said perfunctorily. “I know who you are, of course.”

Charles looked up and found himself unable to speak.

The man was German, by the accent, which in itself was intriguing. His grey-green gaze met Charles’ blue eyes (Charles had it on good authority that they were practically electric) with studied disinterest. He had short brown hair that had been neatly parted to the side with a fine-toothed comb and a great deal of care. It glinted auburn in the sun. His black turtleneck clung to his torso and arms well enough that Charles could see his defined musculature. His hands were large, callused, and faintly scarred. As with the indifference in his eyes, he held himself with deceptive casualness, hidden readiness manifested in grace. Following the line of the man’s body—broad shoulders, tapered at the waist—Charles tilted himself sideways off the table, his hands holding the table’s edge to steady himself and one leg stretched out as a counterbalance, to see the lower half of the man, albeit horizontally. The man’s black leather belt was clasped all the way to the second hole. He wore tan cotton slacks, perfectly creased, and black oxfords. There was no unnecessary fidgeting, no movement wasted. He didn’t even shift under Charles’ attention.

“What are you doing,” Erik said coolly.

Charles got himself upright again, a helpless grin on his face. He didn’t speak. He moved his king’s pawn.

Erik stared at him a moment longer before doing the same, centring his pawn perfectly on the square.

They continued like this for a quiet fifteen minutes. Erik was a tactical, aggressive player—of course he was.

Then Erik said, with that wonderful deadpan voice, “Why are you smiling like that.”

“Good game,” he managed.

They had been playing at an unfaltering pace, but now Erik didn’t move. “No. Tell me, why are you smiling like that?”

As if he’d been storing up his words in the silence before, now Charles felt like he couldn’t speak fast enough. “You’re rather marvellous, my friend.”  
  
“Friend.”

“I don’t understand you at all, yet everything about you presents itself so clearly. The talk in town, the Prydes—I assume you’re heading there after this; I’ll go with you—your fastidiousness, caution, recklessness, aggression. Your resolve. You are the most interesting man I’ve ever observed.” There was so much just from a glance at Erik and a game with him, for a man so guarded. _You’ve lived a peripatetic life, but you’re staying put in Lockheed. How carefully you speak, every word like a precious stone. The way you handle your left arm. How thin you are, how strong. How you befriended the Prydes, how you infuriate MacTaggert._ Where earlier he’d been tongue-tied, now he held his tongue, half-expecting Erik to get up and leave for his presumption. Erik wouldn’t be the first one to do so and his uncompromising disposition made him apt to.

But Erik only lifted an eyebrow. He didn’t say _we just met, not five minutes ago_ or _are you thick in the head_. He said, “You’re as arrogant as they say, Xavier.”

He preened. “Charles. Please.”

“Xavier.”

Charles moved on, leaning in with his forearms on the table. “If I am arrogant, Erik, it’s only because I have reason to be. As I’ve demonstrated.”

“The only thing you are demonstrating is my point,” Erik said. “And it’s Lehnsherr.”

“Erik.”

Erik finally moved his knight, without taking his eyes off Charles. And still with perfect precision, right in the middle of the square.

 _The way you sat opposite me to play some chess in the park._ “Can I assume you’ve sought me out for a reason?” Charles said.

“…Why not. You have presumed so much already.” It was a funny way of saying _yes_ , in every sense.

It couldn’t have to do with Pryor and, just from the gossip on the street, Charles knew that Erik had a reputation for finding people. “You’re looking for someone. You want my help to find them.”

“You should write horoscopes.”

“Well, why then?”

“I didn’t look for you. I saw you here and I felt like a game,” Erik said.

 _But you said—_ but he hadn’t. Charles laughed, and wondered how long it would take to make Erik laugh.

They played in silence again. Charles could admit that they were just about evenly matched in skill. Their playing styles complemented each other to make an interesting game. As he played, he thought about starting a proper conversation with Erik, but Erik was naturally reticent and chances were that the attempt might end up rather more one-sided. A failed attempt like that was worse than none at all. But then, Erik had been the one to approach him, so perhaps he really was interested in conversation.

At that point, Erik began smiling, a thin closed-mouth curl.

“What?” Charles said, unable to resist and not really wanting to.

“I can hear you thinking.”

“I do believe that’s cheating. Stop it at once.”

For the first time in the game, Erik paused, his hand stopped above his queen. “Are you trying to make me laugh?”

“Oh, that means it’s working.”

Erik had his queen retreat. “It means you’re transparent, for someone so—well, they say you’re quite the detective.”

“I am. Quite. Very. Extremely.”

“Extremely the detective,” Erik said, dry as chardonnay.

“Precisely.” Charles rolled his pawn on its base on the square for a moment before moving his knight instead. “I’m sure you’ve read of my exploits.”

“Are they yours now? I was under the impression that they were the convicted’s.”

“I won, so they’re mine.”

Erik was silent for a moment. “Is that what you call it, winning.”

“What do you call it?” he said, looking at him carefully. “When you’re out hunting those people?”

Erik betrayed a flutter of surprise. “Vengeance.”

Charles paused, surprised by his choice of words. “Not justice?”

Erik’s smile turned dark. “Oh, justice would demand far more than I deal them. But I have neither the time nor the resources to do so.”

“You have, I think, the imagination.”

“Very much.” He took Charles’ bishop, placing it neatly on the side with two white pawns. “Extremely.” He surveyed Charles and something shifted in his gaze. “How well do you think you know me, Xavier?”

“Not nearly as well as I’d like to,” Charles said, “but rather more than you think.”

“I think that what you know amounts to nearly nothing.”

“There you go. An easy estimation to beat.”

“I think I know you a little better than you know me, in fact.”

“Oh, really?” What was he getting at?

“You’re looking for someone. You may want my help to find them.”

Charles froze. Just for a split second, but there it was, and it was the worst response he could have given. He wasn’t usually caught off-guard like this. Erik was looking at him; he schooled his features. “Taking a leaf from my book?”

“Extremely transparent,” Erik commented.

“Come on. You’re just stabbing in the dark.” Was Erik the one who’d put the note in the PO Box? He had connections, _was_ relatively new in town, had returned the morning after Charles had driven in. Or had it been a play? It had worked, if it was; Charles’ reaction had given the game away.

“It looks like I landed a hit.”

“Hardly. And if I were on the lookout, I’d hardly tell you. Client confidentiality, you know.” Charles was sure that it had been a guess now. But it did remind him to be more careful around Erik, no matter how compelling the man was. “Check.”

Erik evaded it easily. “There’s not much of that confidentiality in the papers.”

He felt confused that Erik had been the one to change the subject. “So you do follow me.”

“I read the news.”

“And I am a regular star in the news. What do you think, then?”

“Why do you do it?” Erik said unexpectedly.

Charles paused, and paused again to think. “People rarely ask me that, you know. Funny, isn’t it?” He watched Erik move his rook into play, and said, “I’m good at it. But really, I’m the same as you: justice.”

“I said _vengeance_.”

“But you want justice too, even if it’s not always possible.”

“That’s hardly relevant, since I don’t manage it. But you—you believe you deliver justice?”

“I do my best. I don’t pretend to know what they deserve.”

“Yet clearly, you do. You think they deserve the law.”

“Well, then I think that’s the best we’ve got. The law was made to put ideals into practice, and it is constantly evolving to perfect that end,” he said. “My part is to expose the truth. But really, Erik, when I said _justice_ I was referring to quite different parties. Punishment is out of my hands; I deal with the protection of innocents. The wrongly accused, as well as the ones in danger with a killer on the loose. You may have noticed that many of my cases take unexpected turns. This is not coincidence, but indicative that the cases I choose to take are the ones most in need of truth’s light.”

“The protection of innocents? Are you a fool or are you only deluded? All you do is point the finger,” Erik said. “You were truthful before, of your view on justice. Don’t twist it to something even more stupidly noble. Consider this. A killer is on the loose. Scenario 1: he kills one more and you catch him. Scenario 2: he has completed his work and runs free, but additional lives are spared. Which would you prefer? The innocents or justice (as the law would have it)?”

“After all I have said, I can only say the second,” Charles said, toying with the queen he had captured two turns ago. “It is worse to deal something undeserved, to the undeserving, than to deal nothing at all—particularly if that inaction has no practical consequence in the future. I suppose you would prefer the first scenario.”

“Well, yes. I often find myself contrary, but frankly, Xavier, in this case I think most people would,” Erik said, and he leaned in. “Well then, what about your devotion to truth? Scenario 1: you figure out the truth of the matter and expose it to all, for history and the public and the like, but the killer walks free. Scenario 2: all remains a mystery, but for some reason or another he is jailed and punished in proportion to his crimes. In neither scenario does he continue killing.”

Charles deliberated this, running his index finger along the queen’s crown. “The second.”

Erik moved his knight and said, “You are very practical.”

“I—I suppose,” Charles said. He’d never really looked at it that way. “What about you? Truth or justice?”

Erik hesitated. “Truth can be a form of justice. But if I had to choose, then what matters is that the perpetrator is punished and knows it—so the second.”

 _That’s what you do, isn’t it?_ Charles thought. _Justice in the dark._

“Mate in three.”

Charles looked at the board in faint surprise. “So it is.” He studied it a bit more before reluctantly tipping his king over. He stood up. “Shall we go?”

“We?”

“You’re going to Ariel Inn. I’ll go with you.” It was more of a guess than he usually hazarded, but Charles had mentioned it before and Erik hadn’t corrected him then.

Erik tipped his head and began to walk, long steady strides. He said, “I can see you waiting, but I won’t ask how you knew. Not least because Moira told me how you responded when she did.”

Charles remembered. It had been one of his set answers: _I’m very clever._ “I’d be straight with you, my friend,” he lied.

 

**IV**

Kitty Pryde was many things: fifteen, gangly, and persistent as a bull. She could take anything by its teeth when she wanted to, mostly by sheer force of will. Charles, by all accounts a master at conversation, found himself dragged along. Steering the conversation only ever worked if the other party ceded; Kitty had no thought of that at all, so Charles had to follow instead.

“It’s only polite,” he said, when Kitty left to use the restroom.

“Polite,” Erik snorted. He was fixing the kitchen sink. Charles wondered why they’d called Erik here to do it; Mr Pryde, at the very least, should have been able to fix it himself. So he thought it must be a social thing, getting Erik here to fix things, which meant that Erik was the type of person to need a practical, solid reason to come and inadvertently socialise. He thought about how Erik liked chess. Erik continued, “Do you care about politeness when you’re accosting a witness? Condemning a killer?” Erik didn’t seem to care about the fact that the situation was worlds away from that—that, or he didn’t see the difference at all. “Face it, Xavier. You’re in the big leagues now and you can’t catch up.”

“A fifteen year old girl is the big leagues?” Charles said, but Erik had a sort of point. Charles could be brutal when he needed to be—right now, though, he needed to prove something.

Kitty returned and sat on a high stool. “Yeah, so like I was saying, I tell it way better than the brochure. Better than anyone in town.”

He needed to talk about Grey House, at least hear about it; he needed to show he wasn’t afraid. “I can’t imagine the contents of the story could vary very much,” he said discouragingly, knowing that she would barrel on regardless.

“Then you ain’t heard anything yet,” she said. Erik snorted and was summarily ignored. “Now, the Greys were a family of three. John Grey, Elaine Grey, and little Jean Grey, cute as a button, with lovely red hair. Jean was an odd thing, a bit too quiet and a bit too knowing. When she was a baby, she barely cried at all. She was all alone in her own mind. Fifty years to this day—”

“Was it really? Fifty years to this day?”

Kitty glared at him. “Fifty years to this _year_ , fine, it’s still a cool number. Fifty years ago, Grey House burned. You’ve seen Grey House. It’s like a chimney, tall and stone-made, and then it was lit. John and Elaine Grey died of smoke inhalation. Jean survived. Little wonder, since she’s the one who killed them. She set the fire and watched as they died, and walked out cool as you please. They call her the Phoenix, red hair and shadow from a burning building. She was nine. In the end, she was institutionalised far, far away. Lockheed was shaken and relieved to be rid of her. Though she wasn’t dead, her ghost seemed to hang above the town, like the shade of Grey House against the setting sun.

“Then seven years later, Jean came back. No one saw her, really, but they found out she’d returned at the same time they found her still-smoking body in the foyer of Grey House. Self-immolation, nasty business. Her limbs were all dropping off. Had she been wracked with guilt? Or just completely bonkers? Some people say it was the vengeful ghosts of Grey House that did it—her own parents. Whatever the cause, the Phoenix was dead—or so it seemed.

“Stuff like that, it’s disturbing, but it fades. That’s not what everyone’s been jumped up about for the past fifty years. That’s just the tip of the weird iceberg. There’s the creepy stuff. The ghosts. Noises at night, people laughing, talking, screaming. Now you might be thinking _squatters_ , since it’s an abandoned castle and all, but no one, except maybe for Maddie Pryor, would ever go to Grey House more than once. The cleverest ones stay away altogether. Some of the not-so-clever ones have _seen_ the ghosts. Like a flash of red hair in the dark, a child’s laugh,” Charles heard it again, an echo from his memory, and stiffened, “a face in the mirror, the smell of flowers—”

“Flowers?” he said, for something to say but also in genuine puzzlement. Something nagged at him, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Kitty looked satisfied. Like any good storyteller, she’d anticipated that interruption. “The Greys were florists. They always had flowers in the house, sometimes even kept spare stock there. When Jean came back, she’d brought a lot of bouquets with her too. So both times, when the fire raged, Grey House smelled of more than smoke. Mostly, it smelled of all the flowers sweetly burning to ash.”

 

**V**

The next day, Charles went to the park again to find Erik already sitting at their chess table. He slid in opposite him, but before he could say a word, Erik said, “I’m just here for the chess.”

Like how he was just at Ariel Inn to fix things, Charles thought happily. “Then let’s have a game.” He was playing black now. Erik had made the first move twice now already. “So,” he said, opening with his knight, “what do you do besides hunting Nazis in your spare time?”

“And here I thought you knew everything about me,” Erik said.

“Well, I could say that you enjoy reading, chess, and long walks on the beach—alright, not the last one. You fix things for the Prydes and people hire you to find people, not just Nazis and not just to kill them,” Charles said, leaning back in his chair. “But it wouldn’t be a conversation if I said everything for you, would it? And you’re a wonderful conversationalist, my friend.”

“I’m afraid I cannot say the same for you,” Erik said, which was patently untrue. “Either you steal my words or you’re spouting foolish ones.”

“Can they not be one and the same?” Charles said, furrowing his brow very seriously.

In the end, Charles won the game and was hoping to play another, but Erik stood up to leave. Charles rechecked his assumptions for a moment—hadn’t this game been a prelude, as yesterday’s had turned out? Maybe it would turn out exactly as yesterday had: “Let’s leave, then.”

Erik’s lips tugged up at a corner. “Not today, Xavier.”

“Charles, _please_ ,” he said, hardly believing that he hadn’t worn Erik down yet. “Honestly, Erik, aren’t we friends? Chess… buddies, at least?”

“Chess buddies,” Erik snorted, the term falling strangely off his tongue. _Friends_ would really sound much better from that mouth.

“Anyway, I know you’re only calling me that to be contrary,” Charles said, tucking his hands into his pockets as the wind blew chilly. “At least use _Charles_ on my request. It’s only polite.”

“There it is again, _polite_! You can’t pull that all the time,” Erik said, “particularly since you’re not especially _polite_ yourself. And I am still leaving.”

“But—the pleasure of my company!”

“Exactly.”

Charles saw the way Erik was already angled away from him, his body relaxed with foregone decision; it was a lost cause. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.” He wondered if he should have tried for _tonight_. “Come over to Ariel Inn. Or I can meet you here again.”

“For a game,” Erik said quietly, which was Charles took as consent rather than another dry query.

More than a game, Charles thought. “Brilliant.”

There might have been a trace of a smile in Erik’s face. “Goodbye, Charles,” he said, and even though he didn’t say _see you tomorrow_ , the _Charles_ made up for it.

Charles watched him leave.

That was how their incidental meetings became planned. That week, he met Erik every day in the park to play chess. Sometimes just a game, but more often it grew to the best of—well, best of three when Erik won the first, then best of five when Charles won the next two, and so on. And it was only natural, after that, for them to lunch together. The conversations they carried over chess, lively but somewhat fragmented, could be continued in more detail over salmon.

“Physical evidence can clutter the mind,” Charles said. “I know it sounds terribly limited for me to say so, but I only mean that we ought to look at other avenues of thought. By that I mean criminal psychology, which I’m rather famed for.”

“An understanding of the killer. I see the worth in that. Only I’m sure you take it too far,” Erik said, as he cut his lamb. “When you speak of the killers you’ve confined, you speak scientifically, of their motives and personality, as though they had been forged from their environment and not actively chosen to do evil. You would find sympathy from that understanding.”

Charles thought of some of the killers he’d tracked down. The most warped, the most twisted. After a time, he’d, horrifically, become inured to murder most foul. “To some extent,” he said slowly. “I do admit that. Everyone is the protagonist of their own story, after all.”

Erik’s lips twisted at the expression.

Charles continued, “For the killer I have psychoanalysed, I have sympathy. It is as though I’ve unbent their twisted motives into reason, and for a moment—many moments, depending on how well I’ve done my job—their reason becomes my own, and I’m in their mind. How can I not feel some sympathy?” He paused. “And I do not believe I am wrong to do so. In the cases I take, there is no true madness, so there must only be true understanding.”

“Yet with all that understanding, you punish them for what they are, do you not?”

“Punish? I don’t know if that’s what we should strive for, to inflict more suffering. I dislike the death penalty, if that’s what you’re asking. At the very least, subjugation to the law deters the like-minded and keeps the peace.”

“If the law’s final aim is, as you say, to mimic moral laws, then sentencing a killer is not a practical concern.” Though Erik was for the moment using Charles’ conception of the law, his tone was scornful. They’d argue about that later. “It is not merely to prevent further loss of life. It is a moral sentence. And this mustn’t be softened by your unavoidable ‘sympathy’, because then you mistake it for justification.”

“Not for the most heinous of killers, no, not with hours and days of cool planning, and a casual disregard of human life. But in some cases, some tragic cases, I do indeed have some mercy in me.” He thought of some of the crimes of passion he’d seen. He was silent for a moment, then said, “To be perfectly honest, I feel as though I have been hardened, rather than softened, by that sympathy.”

Sometimes they’d argue at Ariel Inn as Erik changed another light bulb, and Kitty, perched on her high stool, would watch them until she could bear it no longer. She’d declare, “Time out! Who wants waffles?” And they’d have a serving of Mrs Pryde’s best.

Despite spending most of his time with Erik, whose presence deterred interlopers, Charles met two new people.

The first was Angel, a waitress at the Tempest Noon. She said _hi_ to Erik when she saw him, an occurrence unusual enough to throw Charles off. Predictably, Erik merely nodded in return, but Charles said, “Won’t you introduce us, Erik?”

Erik gave him a look and said, “Charles Xavier, Angel Salvadore.”

“What a lovely name.” Charles kissed her dark hand.

She smirked. “Flattery will get you nowhere, pal. If you’re digging around for info, just ask me straight.” She was electric, smooth, and, at the moment, slightly confusing.

“I’m sorry?” he said.

Erik said, “We’re here for the oysters.”

She looked between them, then trained her eyes on Charles. “Huh. I thought you would’ve been here for Maddie.”

“Were you acquainted?” Charles said, curious. She must be, of course, but that was another way of asking _how_.

Angel raised her eyebrows. “You really haven’t been investigating, have you? Moira’s already talked to me. I used to hang with Maddie at dance class. That was the only social thing she didn’t stop going to after the thing.” _The thing_ being Pryor’s mysterious disappearance, of course. “You know, just for the record? She wasn’t… crazy or anything. She knew things.” Then Angel put down their drinks and left.

“Dramatic,” Charles said, staring after her. “What did she mean?”

Erik sighed. “When Pryor came back, initially the only thing she did was try to reach out. She talked—well, nonsense about the fire and the Greys. Particularly the Phoenix. Then she became the pariah who holed up in Grey House.”

“But what _did_ she say?”

“Are you sure you’re not investigating?”

“Oh, are you feeling neglected?” Charles said, leaning in.

That was when Angel came back. She glanced between them again, and said, “Whoever killed her must be quaking in their boots. Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, together.” She pulled up a chair from the next table and sat in it.

“Fighting crime?” Charles said lightly.

“Partners in crime,” she said with a grin. “Man, but you guys… I’m not kidding, that’s scary stuff.”

Charles turned to Erik. “You have quite the reputation.”

“It takes two to tango,” Erik said, taking a sip of his wine. “But as Charles said, we’re not investigating. Which is why Charles is going to ask you a lot of nosey questions.”

“Curiosity is a cardinal virtue,” Charles began.

“No, it’s not.”

“Well, it ought to be. And as such, I will be exercising it.” He turned to Angel. “What did Pryor say? What was so mad about her words?”

“Superstitious things, I guess. People talk about the ghosts all the time, but she was really… zealous about it. She talked about finding the Phoenix—but in a positive way, like Satanist stuff, since the Phoenix is the bad gal.”

“And why wasn’t she mad?” Charles said, looking closely at her.

Angel smiled like a watermark, faint as ghosts. “Oh, she was lucid. She was so over the top you could tell. She’d always been a socialite, crazy at parties, but she’d always been level-headed as anything. That—hysteria (a woman ranting, of course they called it hysteria) was just another mask, like the society woman, like the partier.”

“You knew her well, then.”

“Kind of? We were friends, but not, like, super tight. But I’m good at reading people,” Angel said. “Whenever Maddie went on one of her rants, she had this gleam in her eyes, like she was waiting for someone to get it. Like it was a code, or a joke.” She glanced around and got up. “Listen, I should get back to work.” A party of three had just come in.

“Nice to meet you, Angel,” Charles said.

“See you around,” she said. “I hope I’ve helped your not-investigation.”

“I’m really not!” he said as she left. He turned to Erik. “I’m really not. It was curiosity. And habit.”

“I can’t quite believe I’m the one saying this, but the next time you meet someone, try asking them about themselves,” Erik said.

“Let me ask you, then. Do you think Angel really is that perceptive?” Charles said, quite aware that he was investigating by reflex _again_. “It seems a stretch to say she knew that there was more truth in Pryor’s words than everyone else thought, especially since she admits that they weren’t…. ‘super tight’.”

“What, only you can make ridiculous judgements based on subjective observation?”

“Well.” _Yes?_ “Alright, you may have a point. But—that’s my job. A skill I’ve honed through years of hard-won experience—”

“I think she is perceptive,” Erik said, “but she’s never talked about Madelyne Pryor before this. It’s just a bit odd.”

Possibly even suspicious. But Erik, a sceptical man and equally blunt, wouldn’t shy away from the word if he thought it applicable; evidently, he trusted Angel. So: odd. “Just a bit,” Charles said. After a moment, his curiosity perked up again, and he said, “So how do you know her anyway?”

“I found someone for her,” Erik said.

He met the second person when he finally got to see the docks. The docks weren’t industrial but they were certainly busy. There was a lighthouse as promised, rising from a rock face. Off to the side, there was a small stretch of actual beach, sand and seaweed and gravel. There was an angry-looking man there who caught Charles’ attention. He was very tall, broad-shouldered, and frighteningly pale. There seemed to be a bubble of space between him and the crowd. He was talking to Captain MacTaggert quite heatedly.

Erik followed his gaze. “Eager to meet more locals?” he said. “You do have a sense for them. That man is Nathaniel Essex. He owns these docks. He was Madelyne Pryor’s foster father. Deep in grief, one must assume.”

“He certainly looks aggrieved,” Charles said. MacTaggert must be bringing Essex in for questioning. On his home turf, no less.

“They were never very close. No one knew why Essex even adopted her when her parents died.”

With a roll of his dark eyes, Essex seemed to finally give in. He and MacTaggert walked past them, whereupon Charles said, “Good afternoon, Captain MacTaggert, Mr Essex.”

MacTaggert and Essex both turned to look and narrowed their eyes. The synchronisation would almost be funny, if the expression didn’t make Essex look alarmingly like a snake.

MacTaggert said, suspiciously, “Xavier. …Lehnsherr.”

Essex looked between MacTaggert and him, and said, “You really don’t want to do this, Xavier.”

“Oh, no, I’m not part of the investigation,” Charles said quickly. “People really must stop assuming that.”

Erik snorted.

“There’s no mystery to solve here,” Essex said. “It’s the Phoenix.”

Like father, like daughter, it seemed. Both obsessed with the Phoenix.

“And _you_ ,” Essex continued, turning to Erik, his voice hard, “Lehnsherr, you’re in for it, I tell you.”

MacTaggert, looking impatient again, dragged Essex off to the waiting police car.

“So. You know each other rather well.” The curl of a question.

Erik looked amused. “Charles, if I kept track of every person who had a grudge against me… Well. It’s enough to keep track of my own.”

The week left Charles thinking. Lockheed was full of powerful people. For whatever reason, whatever history, this was undeniable.

He could see, then, why _they_ might come here, might even have some stake here. Certainly, Grey House was the earliest he’d ever heard of their exploits. Maybe Lockheed was where it had all begun.

 

**VI**

When Charles extended his stay for another week, he heard about the second murder. Emma Frost, untouchable in life, had gone the same way in death. She’d gone on her private yacht alone to turbulent waters, and had been killed there in the middle of a storm. Like Pryor, she’d been strangled and brutalised post-mortem. Her face had been smashed in, her fingers cut off. The room she’d been in was quite literally painted in blood—coated on with a paint roller also found on the scene. The blood type, B pos, matched Emma’s. The killer must have been hiding on board. And yet—the sea would have been too wild for the killer to swim away.

Emma Frost, who’d known his parents, who almost certainly had had something to tell him, dead. It was too much of a coincidence.

The ghost stories took over the town, though no one else spoke of the Phoenix that Essex had mentioned. Charles even considered investigating himself to dispel the rumours. This ignorance, the clinging to the supernatural, irked him. Besides which, there was no denying that the murders were interesting, the sort of cases he did take.

There was a knock on his door the morning after the news. Charles started. He doubted it was Erik, by his character. He wondered fleetingly if it could be MacTaggert, come to recruit him, or if it was only his pride that deemed it a possibility at all.

He grabbed his key from the bedside table and opened the door. A waft of some sweet smell drifted in; something from the kitchen, presumably. There was no one outside his door. He looked down the corridor and saw nothing. Maybe he had heard a thump from elsewhere and thought it was his door. Maybe it had been Kitty playing a prank on him.

He felt a prickle on the back of his neck, like something was behind him, like something had slipped into the room when he’d opened the door, along with the scent. Charles suppressed a shiver. His blood sounded loud in his ears. _I’m going out_ , he thought. _I didn’t hear anything, really, and I was planning on going anyway._ He didn’t bother taking his coat, which had his wallet in it, even though it was just by the door. He just left. As he closed the door from the hallway, he saw that the fire-coloured Honey Room was as empty as it had ever been.

He bumped into Erik in the hallway. “Hello,” he said, pleased and surprised, the strangeness retreated from his mind. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you, actually.”

“In my room?”

“As things would appear,” Erik said, expression unchanged.

Charles felt the delight that comes from having an assumption overturned. “Couldn’t wait till noon?”

“I was afraid you might sleep the day away. It’s already eleven. You’re lazy enough already.”

“I’m on holiday! That’s as good a reason as any, I should think,” he said, arching a brow. “Nonetheless, I’m glad to see you, my friend.”

Erik said, “And I you, Charles.”

Charles stopped short and rounded on Erik, putting a hand on his forehead. “Are you alright? Feeling feverish? Has something come over you?” He placed his other hand on the side of Erik’s neck, which actually was feeling quite hot. “I could have sworn you just expressed some want for my company.” He had never doubted Erik’s friendship, and they had grown quite close for such a short time, but Erik had never before voiced it so plainly.

“Please, Charles.” Erik laughed. He had a curious warmth in his eyes that warmed Charles in turn. He took Charles’ hands to lower them with his, but didn’t quite let go. “It was a shade of familiarity at best.”

“A liking, at worst.”

“Barely anything, in truth.”

Another voice entered the hallway. “Erik? You’re taking so long. I thought you were meant to be good at finding—Oh.” Kitty rounded the corner and saw them like that, smiling at each other, Erik loosely holding Charles’ hands. She faltered.

“Good morning, Kitty,” Charles said, feeling his cheeks burn though he didn’t quite know why. His hands fell by his sides, limp and awkward. “I see you sent Erik my way.”

She shrugged. She held herself a little awkwardly too. “He asked. There’s a chess set in the Honey Room, you know.” Their daily matches at the park had not gone unnoticed.

As the three of them walked down the passage together, Erik said, “Where’s your coat?”

“Oh. Forgot it, I suppose.”

Erik stopped. “Well? Aren’t you going to get it?”

“Don’t you know how lazy I am?”

“Don’t be a fool, Charles. It’s cold.”

So he had to go back to his room, forcing his heart steady. He left the door open behind him. Erik and Kitty were right down the hallway. He took his coat from its place beside the door when something caught his eye from the just-visible bathroom mirror. He paused. He really didn’t want to check.

He walked to the bathroom and checked.

The area surrounding the mirror was blackened. There were words on the mirror. They were in block letters but strangely messy, in slashes, like they’d been written by someone unused to writing on a vertical surface. That was all, that was why the message looked a bit strange, uncanny.

It said: THEY’RE HERE. THEY’RE HERE. THEY’RE HERE. THEY’RE HERE. THEY’RE HERE.

All crowded down the mirror.

His coat fell from his hand. He backed into the wall, still staring.

“Charles?” It was Erik. He could hear him coming into the room. “Charles, what—” He felt Erik at the open door of the bathroom. “Charles, are you alright?”

Warmth seeped into his right arm. Erik was gripping it. The words seemed less real with someone else here. “It was just there. It—it followed me here, crept into this room, and I thought I’d escaped—”

Erik tugged at his arm. “Let’s go first, then you can tell me about it. Look at me.”

He didn’t. He ended up walking backwards with Erik leading him. When they were out of the room, the door firmly closed, he said, “I went to Grey House, you know? I’ve seen houses more haunted. But I saw a fire there, and a girl, and someone tried to choke me… Only, I don’t believe in—ghosts. I really don’t. Where’s Kitty?”

“Theresa called her. Charles, what are you saying?”

“Who wrote it anyway? A ghost in my room. Really. You know what they’re saying about Pryor and Frost? That a curse fell upon them, that ghosts killed them. That’s ridiculous. It’s always human evil. But I saw that girl in flames, felt those hands wrapped around my neck. Ghosts could’ve killed me then. And here I am, trembling at the mere memory. An illusion, I know! But I can’t—I can’t.” Charles breathed hard. “I spent my life afraid of ghosts. They can’t exist.”

Erik squeezed his arm, moving closer to him. “There’s nothing here. You’re safe. There’s nothing here, Charles.”

“You must think I’m crazy.”

“No.”

“You’d think years of this would ease my fear. But I’ve always been afraid that they’d come back for me, even now, more than twenty years on.”

Erik’s grip tightened. “Who are _they_?”

Charles tried to steady himself, breathed in and out. His thoughts were a storm: _Graymalkin, Raven, Hellfire…_ The words began tumbling out. “A group of arsonists. An organisation, an entity with its own credos and its own psychology. My longest-running case, and not even a case—no one thinks they exist, you see. But they execute the most—not necessarily gruesome, but _clever_ murders by fire. Spontaneous combustion, someone burned from the inside out. A fire twenty metres below the sea. There’s a member said to hold fire in his hand, who’s able to control it.” He was barely even seeing Erik anymore, just the slats of his memory. He made himself clinical, the observer analyser. “They’re bound by—by fire, and that need to execute the impossible. And always to kill. Their ethos is lined in destruction. It’s a—a fascinating group psychology.”

“You said you feared that they’d come _back_ for you,” Erik said slowly.

He shivered. “They burned Graymalkin. The estate, my home, all marble and they burned it without touching the garden grounds. My parents died and my sister was taken, and I was halfway across the world at the bottom of a bottle.” He collected himself with a measured breath. “The rest, as they say, is history.”

Erik’s thumb was rubbing circles over his shoulder. “You became a PI. Worked impossible cases. And you never trusted the police.” His eyes shifted. “You’ve been looking for your sister all this time. Here?”

“I got a lead.” _The PO Box._ Charles tilted his head back, resting it against the wall. “…I’d prefer it if you kept this to yourself.”

“Obviously, yes, but Charles… I can help you,” Erik said. “I find people.”

 _How can I trust you?_ was the first response that came to mind. He’d felt safe enough to tell Erik his history, a vague version, at least, when the words were bursting out of him. But safe wasn’t the same as trust.

He was silent too long. Erik smiled wryly and said, “A conversation for next time, perhaps. I do have some other questions. In Lockheed, all those years ago, I suppose the arsonists took Grey House. It wasn’t Jean—or Jean was part of them already—”

At nine? “I don’t know,” he said half-heartedly.

Erik paused. Something softened in his face. “They’re only trying to scare you,” he said. “If these arsonists perform impossible feats, they could make a ghost. They certainly could write those things on your mirror.”

If they had intended to scare him, though, wouldn’t they have written something… more threatening? “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he finally said. He felt tired.

“Alright.” Erik glanced down the hallway. “So you’ll be alright—tonight.”

Charles’ stomach twisted at the thought. But he had to be. “Don’t worry about me. Let’s just go.” He walked down the hallway first, and Erik caught up with him after a slight pause.

They saw Kitty on their way out and waved goodbye. She cocked an eyebrow as if to say _that sure took a while._

“I feel like shellfish,” Charles said.

A few paces, then: “You always do. I can hardly believe you haven’t tired of it yet.”

“Well, it is Lockheed’s specialty, and for good reason. The seafood here is frankly extraordinary.”

All around them, people were still talking about Emma. Charles tried to ignore them, but trying to ignore something made it an elephant. Eavesdropping had always been second nature to him. Erik gave him a sidelong glance and said, “Gossip, all day every day. _That’s_ Lockheed’s specialty.”

Charles shrugged. “You can hardly blame them. It’s genuinely sensational.”

“It’s lurid,” Erik said. “But that’s no topic for a meal.”

Many of their meals had concerned topics as tasteless as that, no pun intended. Erik was being kind. “Alright, Erik. If you’re so squeamish.”

Their shoulders brushed.

“Tempest Noon, then?” Erik said.

“Nowhere new to surprise me with, Mr Lehnsherr?”

“That must be the first time you’ve called me that,” Erik said. His tone was hard to decipher. “Well. If you have any objections…”

“It’s fine. See, I’m practically a local already,” Charles said. He suspected that Erik didn’t eat in town much and had run out of restaurants to take him to. Besides, the Tempest Noon was excellent.

He did his best to ignore the whispers as they walked the short distance there. Erik kept the conversation afloat rather admirably for someone who’d stoop to silence when Charles didn’t pick up the slack.

Angel greeted them at their table in the Tempest Noon. One look at them and she said, “I know someone’s died, but there’s no need to look it.”

“No love for Frost?” Charles said.

“Let me put it this way: you look like death warmed over, but that’s warmer than Frost was,” Angel said.

He tried to examine his reflection in the knife. “Do I really look that bad?”

“You look fine,” Erik said. “Let’s order.”

Angel took their order and looked put out. “You don’t have to be so brusque.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Hmph.” She sat down on the third unused chair at their table, turning to Charles with a hand on her chin. “So, Mr Xavier, let’s make polite conversation like friends do. How are you? How was your day? What do you think of the latest death?”

“Is that really polite conversation?” Erik said. “Just leave it, Salvadore.”

 

**VII**

He left the light on that night, just as he’d left it on the night he’d gone to Grey House. It could be seen seeping out from the edges of the curtain. If the Hellfire Club needed proof that he was afraid, there it was, Charles Xavier sleeping with the light on.  
  
After dinner, he scrubbed away the words on his mirror. It was easy. They’d been written in ash. _A phoenix risen…_ But he couldn’t do anything about the blackened patch of wall surrounding it.

He forwent taking a shower.

He ensconced himself in the bed, propping a book on his lap. A yellowed copy of _The Old Man and the Sea_ , from the small shelf at the foot of his bed, just the thing to get him to sleep. (There was also a peeling collection of Poirots in that shelf, funnily enough.) A rustle of the marmalade quilt, the scrape of a page, and the low hum of the heater settled the room.

His thoughts were still buzzing, at first. He had a tendency to overthink, and the day had given him plenty of material: if he should have told Erik what he did, whatever he was meant to find here in Lockheed, the Hellfire Club no doubt aware of his presence… Raven…

Eventually, there was only Hemingway on his mind, slow and beguiling. His eyes slid, and he slumped even as one practised hand clumsily set the book down on the bedside table. He was very nearly asleep when he smelled something pungent and sweet, something floral. His eyes watered in the light when they slid open. Turning his head away from the lamp, he saw a white blur at his bedside. When he blinked at it, it formed into a spray of little white flowers. His mind woke a little more. The flowers hadn’t been there before. The moment he thought this, he was overcome with a wave of déjà vu. _The Greys were florists_ , he thought. _The smell of flowers. This smell, I’ve smelled it before._

Then suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. He was panicking. His heart was speeding along, the traitor, as he struggled. He felt like he was burning, _fire_ , and he panicked even more. Water began dribbling from his mouth and nose, like his lungs were choked with it. He spluttered and gurgled. He was flailing too, and he knocked the Hemingway clean off the table.

Suddenly a surety came upon him: he was going to die like this, drowning in air.

 

**VIII**

“I’m sure you’ve heard. So the killings continue.”

Scott Summers was dead. He had been drowned. Then the killer had cut open his body so he was dead in a bath of his own watered blood. His ears had been cut off and were also floating in the bath.

He’d been drowned.

Then the impossible aspect, which the killer was evidently so fond of: there’d been three people in the sitting room right as the murder had happened, who all swore that there’d been no one in the bathroom, which had its door wide open before Summers had gone in, and not a sound of struggle—not a splash, not a snick.

“I’m not at liberty to disclose much, but suffice to say I think it’s prudent to bring you in. Bizarre cases are your bread and butter.” MacTaggert was thinking that he was already investigating. She’d been thinking that for a while. The new thing was that she was thinking they needed his help.

So he said _yes_. To murder at the bottom of a tub, to the ear emancipation. To stopping this killer, before Charles lived out all the deaths as they came. “There are no ghosts,” he said.

“Yeah, we got that,” MacTaggert said.

He had to think. He boxed up last night’s episode to the part of his mind he left Grey House and THEY’RE HERE THEY’RE HERE and Graymalkin.

“When do I start?”

“Right now. I have the relevant reports back at the station, but let’s get you a look at the crime scenes first.”

The locked room, the yacht, and Summers’ bathroom. Bloody, bloody, bloody. “Charming.”

What was significant wasn’t just the sheer violence the bodies had been subject to after death, but how that violence had been inflicted. It hinted at the killer’s motive, why each victim had been killed. Pryor’s was obvious, the eyes and the _X_ -ed mouth—she’d seen something and the killer had shut her up. _Grey House._ Similarly, with the bleeding ears, Summers had heard something, or been told something. And Frost’s fingers being cut off—itchy fingers.

“Summers was one of our prime suspects,” MacTaggert said. “He was one of the few links between Pryor and Frost—at least, one who might have a motive for the both of them. He dated each of them for a time. Bad breakup with Pryor after she set her roots in Grey House. Not so much drama with Frost, but she’s good at keeping scandal quiet.”

All moot, now.

Next. All three victims had died of suffocation, one by drowning and two by strangulation.

His breathing hitched. He closed his eyes tight for a moment. _Calm. Think._

Suffocation. This was more of an indication of the killer’s remarkable control and need for control than a reflection on motive, as the extracted eyes or cut digits were.

The killer was, of course, daring. The murders had begun just as Charles arrived. Whether they’d been planned or not, the killer hadn’t been deterred. More than that—killing so soon after Charles had come, Charles who was known for solving such impossible cases, was tantamount to a challenge. The killer was cocky. Most were.

Flamboyant, too. For all the symbolism there must be in the murders, every one of them was striking. There was no subtlety, only full visual effect: eyes rolling around in a tall glass, crimson against Frost’s signature white, and ears floating in cloud-bloody bathwater.

He might have to wait to read the personal files for more clues on the killer’s psychology. Now, though, with MacTaggert taking him to the crime scenes—now was logistics. The locked room mystery, the yacht in the middle of the storm, the silent murder.

Logistics. Easy.

“Easy?” MacTaggert said, incredulous. “Setting aside your arrogance, don’t you take these cases precisely because they’re challenging?”

“Certainly. But it’s not the physical impossibility that’s the challenge—it’s the psychology.” He glanced at her. “What sort of killer would go through such trouble just to execute an impossible murder? There are many variations on the locked room. Each one is distinct both physically and psychologically. The latter is complex. The former is… derivative, inevitably. There are many ways to create an impossible murder, believe you me, but there are only so many ways.”

They arrived at Summers’ place. It was a small apartment near the docks that he had shared with his brother.

“Alex Summers, Sean Cassidy, and Armando Muñoz,” MacTaggert said. “They were the three people on the scene when it happened. Annual game night, _Monopoly_ set in front of them. Scott Summers excused himself half an hour in. Alex Summers went to check on him after ten minutes of silence and found the body. They called the police immediately.”

The bathroom door was open now, the inside clearly visible from the sitting room. It would possible for someone to have been hiding inside before Scott Summers had gone in. Only how would the killer have known that Scott would be the one to enter, that anyone would? Charles entered the bathroom. A tub took up the right wall, which the door opened into—the killer could have hidden in there. A toilet and sink. A window on the left wall looked out at the wall of an alley.

“We found nail marks and scuffmarks,” MacTaggert said, nodding to the window. “The killer must have escaped through there and make his way down on adjacent windowsills. We’re only on the second storey. It’s not even too hard.”

“Hardly a locked room,” Charles said. “But that’s interesting. It’s people-locked, you see. A killer was here but the witnesses heard nothing. Those marks could be from anywhere unless we know there was someone inside.”

“We know someone was inside,” MacTaggert said, giving him a look. “Someone must have killed Scott Summers. But you have a point. Alex Summers says he’s used that route himself to sneak out of the apartment.”

“Sneak out?”

“Scott was Alex’s legal guardian, up till six months ago. There was curfew.”

Charles walked back into the living room. “How long were the boys here for?”

“From seven-thirty, as usual for game night. Scott went in at about eight. The police arrived at eight-fifteen,” MacTaggert said. “Also, Scott Summers went to the bathroom shortly before their arrival. Alex says he didn’t mention anything, so presumably there was nothing unusual; that is, there was no one inside and the bath was empty.”

If not for his alibis in Cassidy and Muñoz, Alex Summers would be very suspicious. The route down the windowsills, the sole living authority on the bath. As the sole roommate, he was the one benefitting from having the murder on a night when there were other people in the apartment. If there was a way that Scott had died without him at the scene… But Alex had called for help immediately after finding the body. No time for anything there.

Really, jumping to the kid brother as the first suspect was rather callous of him.

Perhaps an accomplice? Still. Farfetched.

But that—that was why it was interesting. Why the killer would choose game night, a regular night where two other people would be on the scene, where there would be witnesses to not see things and not hear things—to deliberately create that people-locked room. This didn’t use impossibility to stymie the police; the police could easily move forward without solving the silence of the murder, since they could put it down to the witnesses’ distraction. But with that rather weak solution, the impossibility was just… baffling.

“What sort of person,” Charles mused.

Next, they went to Pryor’s residence. It was near the edge of town, a large house she used to host many parties in, but in recent years more empty than bright. Very opulent, with four storeys in all. Pryor had been killed in a guest bedroom on the second floor, which had no windows and a single door—locked from the inside. Classic.

“Funny,” Charles remarked, “what things they call _classic_ instead of _unoriginal_. I suppose there’s some elegance in its simplicity.”

There wasn’t much furniture in the room. A queen-size bed with its right side facing the door, with a small bedside table on each side. A chest at the foot of the bed full of board games and books. A tall closet on the wall opposite the bed, large enough for someone to hide in, and bare of any clothes but a moth-eaten winter coat. There were a few paintings—nothing hidden, nothing symbolic.

He checked the doorframe—hinges on the inside, as it should be. The doorjamb was damaged from having the door kicked down. The door itself was sealed in a plastic bag and propped beside the doorframe. He checked the lock, which still had the key in it—it could only be locked and unlocked from the inside, so there were no tricks there either. Then he checked the rest of the room carefully, even as he said, “I doubt there are contraptions. Secret passages and the like. It’s rather cheating, don’t you think? Very dull.” There weren’t. And there was no doubt that Pryor had died in the locked room, since she’d been strangled. (Hadn’t, for instance, stumbled in alone as she died, and locked it herself.)

“Who found the body?”

“We got an anonymous tip,” MacTaggert said.

“The killer, probably. Or an accomplice,” Charles said, straightening from his inspection of a bedside table. “What happened when you got here? How many men did you send?”

“A squad of three. I wasn’t there. The call directed us straight to this room. There was no one else in the house. They broke down the door and found Pryor in the middle of the bed. She’d been dead for about three hours. Eyes in a glass on her bedside. Cut up post-mortem with a knife from Pryor’s own kitchen, left at the scene. They searched the rest of the room and the house, but there was no one else. That’s all.”

“I need more than that,” Charles said. “How was it decided who was on the squad? Who checked that Pryor was dead? How exactly did they search the room?”

Since there were so many ways to create the illusion of a locked room—some of which, if executed perfectly, were perfectly undetectable after the fact—it fell to the killer’s psychology to see which one he would choose. Would the killer enjoy the mechanical solution? A spring, a trap—but that was a bit prosaic. Or would he enjoy deception? Tricking people, lying, putting something, maybe even himself, right under their noses. The killer had already proven himself reckless. Provocative.

Perhaps Charles was projecting, but he suspected the latter.

The killer had chosen such a bare room. There wasn’t even an adjoining powder room, or anything matching the plushness he’d seen in other areas of Pryor’s house.

“I need more,” he said again. “Who was on the squad?”

“Logan Howlett, Damon Zale, and Bobby Drake. Not sure who’s in right now. Azazel, at the very least.” At Charles’ stare, she said, “Azazel—that’s Zale’s nickname. Practically his proper name by now.”

“Let’s head to the station now, then. I’ve seen everything there is here,” he said, sweeping one last glance over the sparse room.

They drove to the station. The gossip must be at its height now, Charles thought ruefully as he stepped out of the cruiser.

Essex was just leaving the station house. Charles called out to him, and he turned. “Xavier,” Essex said, his mouth drawn down. “You’re a fool, you see that now?”

Before Essex could say something like _where are my taxpayer dollars going_ (Charles got that a lot when he was working with the police—or, equally, when he was going against the police), Charles said, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m—well, I wasn’t investigating. Then. I didn’t take you in. MacTaggert did her job, and well.”

Essex didn’t even glance at MacTaggert. In fact, he gave no sign that Charles had said anything at all. “And Lehnsherr, have you dragged him into this too?” Essex continued. “Oh yes, I’ve heard about the two of you, scurrying about town. Investigating together instead of taking him in.”

Charles knew he shouldn’t engage. He already knew that Essex had some kind of grudge against Erik. But Charles opened his mouth and said, “I’d advise you slander someone else before I—”

“Don’t like the truth, Xavier? He’s the one took Maddie those years ago, put ideas in her head…!”

“He found Madelyne Pryor,” MacTaggert cut in. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

“He—what?” Charles said.

“Of course. He found her, _somehow_ , out of the goodness of his heart. He found her when no one else could, and so quickly too. Dragged her back babbling, and he without a word on where she’d been in the first place!” Essex spat, redness rising in his white face.

“It was a job,” MacTaggert said shortly.

“As though Salvadore had the money to pay it—”

“Are you done?” she said. “We’ve wasted enough time on you already. Thank you, Mr Essex.” She took Charles by the arm and strode away.

Charles was too perplexed to wrench away. Pryor. _Pryor_ was the person Erik had found for Angel. “Erik—Erik’s only been here for six months, hasn’t he? And Pryor went missing three years ago. Angel Salvadore hired him? And he found Pryor _pro bono_?”

“Keep your head on, Xavier,” MacTaggert said as they walked into the station. “It’s just details. Unless you can tell me how it’s not, in fact, irrelevant to the case.”

It couldn’t be irrelevant. It seemed incredibly important. But he had to admit that the story, the gist of it all, remained unchanged. Still, he tried harder to think of its significance, anything at all.

MacTaggert took his silence as surrender. “Just because you’re… personally offended—well. I wouldn’t worry. Lehnsherr keeps things close to his chest.” She scanned the cubicles, already moving on. “Looks like Azazel and Drake are in,” she said loudly enough that it was a summons for the two men, who glanced at each other before walking over.

“How did Angel even know Erik in the first place?” Charles said.

“Ask Lehnsherr when you see him,” she said dismissively. “Now, do you want to talk to my officers or not?”

The two men stood in front of him, eyeing him with interest.

“Azazel. Bobby,” Charles said. “It’s a pleasure.”

They each nodded with their name. So Azazel was the tall one, who held himself like a spring. He had a scar over one of his icy eyes, running parallel to his sharp nose, which stopped just short of his black goatee. Bobby was blond and blue-eyed, fitting every cliché of the fresh-faced newbie.

Charles swallowed his disappointment. “Gentlemen. If you could run me through what happened.”

Azazel was looking at MacTaggert now. “You called Xavier in?”

“Answer the man,” she said.

“Who did what, how long, et cetera, et cetera. Details, please,” Charles said.

Azazel, eyes narrowed, remained silent. Bobby glanced at him, coughed, and said, “Well, I was on phone duty and got the call. I can’t say anything about it—anonymous tip, you know… Logan’s senior, so he headed the team—me and Azazel. We got to the house in about ten minutes. I didn’t notice anything unusual. It was quiet and empty, but it always is. No sign of a break-in, but a house that big with no one in it, it’s pretty easy to get in unnoticed. We headed straight to the room the caller had said. Azazel was in front, so he tried the door, but it was locked. So Logan kicked it down. We saw Pryor lying there—”

“How long did that take, kicking it down?”

“Um, well, the door was pretty normal strength, Logan’s buff, so like two or three kicks?” He paused. “Anyway, so we saw Pryor there, with blood all over, so she was clearly dead. I got closer and I saw round things in a glass—eyeballs—then I saw that she didn’t have eyes anymore… Logan checked her pulse, but you know, it was obvious she was gone. What with the blood, and, well, her eyes had been cut out. Azazel was by the door calling it in, and it’s a pretty small room so no one would’ve been able to slip past anyway. Then we checked the rest of the room, not that there was much to see. I stayed with the body while the others searched the house. Backup came in about five minutes.”

“It’s a big house,” Charles said.

“And we didn’t find anything. Anyone,” Azazel finally said. “It was a long shot. We just searched possible exit points, hiding places.”

“You knew the place well enough to do that?”

“We’ve done security for it before. So yes.” Azazel flicked his eyes over Charles. “Anything else, Xavier?”

“No, that’s all.” Perhaps he could talk with Logan next time.

Azazel returned to his cubicle. Bobby hesitated until MacTaggert dismissed him.

“Feeling up to one more stop, Xavier?” she said. “There’s the yacht to make bingo.”

So they headed off again to the last remaining crime scene. In the car, he looked through pictures of Frost’s mutilated body. It was very violent, Frost’s face completely bashed in, to say nothing of the featured blood splatter. In fact, it was more brutal than the others. That might suggest a long-nursed grudge against Frost, but if that was the case, Frost would have been the first to go. Unless Frost had somehow managed to anger the killer just before? But there was only a six-day gap between Pryor’s and Frost’s murders.

And to think, what Frost might have—no, almost definitely had known… What she had wanted to tell him…

She should’ve known she was in danger. She shouldn’t have waited a week to meet him, for Christ’s sake.

“What were Frost’s movements the week before she was killed?” he said.

“Nothing unusual,” MacTaggert said. “It was a busy period for Frost Enterprises, so she was at the office a lot of the time. But we can’t exactly ascertain her every move. She was a busy woman.”

He looked through the photos again. And again. “And her fingers?”

“...Cut off, clear as day.”

“But the actual fingers,” he said. “Where are they? Pryor’s eyes were left in a glass, Summers’ ears in the bath.”

“…They weren’t there. Maybe they were tossed overboard in the storm,” MacTaggert said dubiously.

“Yes, all ten fingers just moseyed over to the door, rolled under it, and jumped ship,” he said.

There was little of note at the crime scene itself, except that it was gorier than the photos had captured. The killer had come prepared with a paint roller—which had, helpfully, not been tossed overboard but left at the scene. So naturally, there were no clues on it—and painted the walls with Frost’s blood. So the white walls of the room were printed with oblongs of red, and where they ended trails of blood dripped down like a bad paint job. The room smelled rancid with the heaps of dried blood.

“If Frost was so busy, why did she go out on her yacht?” he said.

“Good question. We don’t know. Witnesses say she entered alone, but the killer could have easily snuck in and waited there. Or even planned to meet her there.”

“What witnesses?”

“Anyone who was at the docks, really. She was a striking figure, perfect hair, always dressed in painful white,” she said. “So Frost sailed out pretty far and the storm hit about an hour later. The ships cleared away… Frost stayed out there.”

How had the killer escaped from a ship in a storm? “A bit,” Charles said, “of brute force. Frost’s murder is anomalous in many ways, all of which boil down to a lack of finesse. The killer must have had quite a grudge. He maintained control for the strangulation; then he let loose to a far greater degree than the other murders.”

“The killer painted the damn room. He’d need some cool for that.”

“But angrily. Furiously. Look, the paint roller’s nearly destroyed. You can see from the imprints that he did it quick and hard. Really, if he’d painted the walls completely red, a regular paintjob but with blood, it would’ve made the… mundanity of a paintjob, contrasted against the violence, far more effective. Instead, the blood’s unevenly slathered on, and only coats about half of each wall. Messy. More deranged than disturbed.”

“Unless he was in a rush,” she said. “Maybe his way out of the storm needed to be carefully timed.”

“Maybe,” he conceded reluctantly. “But my point, my point. My point, which I quite detracted from, was that in this particular murder, he lacked finesse. And escaping from a storm is quite the opposite of the locked room (particularly since we know they’d been caught in the storm for the entire time): it completely defies any elegant solution. So quite simply, or brutishly, he had at least one accomplice with a sturdy vessel and that was how he escaped.”

She stared.

“It’s tedious, I know.”

“You also lack evidence.”

“If you find a witness who’d seen a vessel in the storm, maybe. But other than that, it would be an undetectable escape—till we find the killer and his accomplice, upon which we can check for vessels registered to their names. Perhaps look for people working at the docks, anyone with experience with ships.”

“A ship, in that storm? You’d need a submarine, Xavier.”

“Whatever would let them endure the storm.” He pinched his nose. He examined the room for a while more, to no avail, and then they both walked out.

“Bingo,” he sighed.

 

**IX**

Suitcase in hand, he said, “Are you quite sure?”

“For the last time—and it really is the last, this time—yes,” Erik said. “There’s no avoiding me now.”

“I wasn’t avoiding you,” Charles said as they set off. “I was working.”

Erik shrugged, an impression of carelessness. “I know. The talk’s made the rounds in town. Solve the case quickly and you’ll be out of my hair.” It was lovely hair, lined bronze under the yellow streetlights.

Charles still couldn’t quite believe he was on his way to Erik’s place. To spend the night, no less—well, several nights till the case was solved. He touched his throat, which, by a flick of Erik’s eyes, didn’t go unnoticed. He hadn’t told Erik how he’d nearly drowned without a drop of water near him, not in so many words, but… How much had he spilled about his ghostly encounters in Grey House? He’d been incoherent to some degree, at least. But Erik could put the pieces together. Another incident, Erik would surmise.

“Just don’t turn your nose up at my living quarters. I’m not one for creature comforts,” Erik said suddenly, looking ahead. “I’ll take the couch. You can take the bed. And that’s the end of it.”

“…I’m not complaining.”

 _Living quarters_. That was the right phrase. Erik’s place wasn’t a home, barely a dwelling. It was small but serviceable, and bare. There were three rooms: a small sitting room with a kitchen adjacent, a small bedroom, and a small bathroom. The worn olive sofa where Erik would spend the night was immediately visible from the door. It looked hard, the sort of thing that would stiffen a spine. Erik didn’t even have any spare pillows or blankets.

“This is nice,” Charles said.

“Home sweet home. You can wash up first.” Erik took off his coat.

Charles cast his gaze about the room once more, what little there was to see. Erik’s. “Thank you.”

Erik paused mid-motion. Then he hung his coat up proper. “Yes. Well.” He paused again. “You’re welcome.”

Charles gave him a small smile as he headed to the bathroom. There was a rectangle mirror right over the sink. He paused at it for a moment. Some relief settled over him at how perfectly ordinary it was. He took a very hot shower and thought about the Summers case.

Impossible, to fill a bath without making a sound. It wasn’t a question of the sound of splashing, but the very rush of water through the pipes. The bath must have been filled before everyone arrived. Since Alex had said Scott hadn’t mentioned anything out of the ordinary after Scott had gone to the bathroom the first time, one of them must have been lying. Charles soaped himself, frowning. Not Alex—he could’ve just claimed he’d gone to the loo and seen for himself that the bath was empty, and that would be even more convincing since Scott had gone again. So it must be Scott, who lied to Alex by omission when he hadn’t mentioned the filled tub. Charles briefly considered: could that have been a detail not worth mentioning? At the very least, though, Scott would have drained it out. So Scott had known, and it had been, inexplicably, expected. He might even have filled the tub himself.

Scott had known the killer.

Satisfied, Charles stepped out of the shower, dried himself with the thin towel hanging on the rack, and: “Oh.” He’d forgotten his pyjamas. He hadn’t unpacked anything at all yet. So he wrapped the towel around his waist and stepped out.

The cool air was sharp after all that hot water. He was quite aware of every inch of his bare skin but for the small stretch of towel. Being bare in the privacy of a bathroom was one thing, quite another to be so in an unfamiliar home, even if it was Erik’s. What’s more, he’d left his suitcase in the sitting room.

The redness in his skin, Charles told himself firmly, was just a remnant of the hot water. Stupid to be overthinking this anyway.

“Forgot my things,” he said, supremely casual, as he entered the living room. Erik was lying on the couch, eyes on the ceiling—well, not anymore. Charles quickly concentrated on his suitcase, which was near the front door.

Erik was silent. Probably had turned back to the ceiling; Charles’ back was to him now, so he didn’t know for sure.

He bent down and unlocked his suitcase. He rummaged around, regretting for a moment how he’d just tossed all his clothes in in his haste. Naturally, his pyjamas turned out to be stuffed right at the bottom. He extracted them after a bit of time. “Ta,” he said, and he turned to walk back to the bathroom.

Erik grunted. He had turned over so his back was facing Charles.

Charles changed and walked out again, towelling his hair. Erik walked past him to the bathroom before Charles could even open his mouth. The door shut. Almost immediately, there was the sound of water. If nothing else, Erik was efficient. It seemed abrupt, unless Charles was overthinking again.

Charles, a snooper by trade and by nature, snooped the only things in the impersonal apartment that could be snooped—Erik’s books. They were impressively diverse: about a third of them were in German, which was always dangerous, and the rest was a mix of French, Spanish, Russian, and English. Charles ran his finger down the worn spine of _The Once and Future King_. He had a matching copy in his suitcase. At the bottom of the bookshelf, there was a travel chess set standing on its side. Charles put it on the small table in front of the couch, and set it up.

The sound of water stopped. Erik soon entered the room in a t-shirt and sweatpants.

“I spoke to Essex today,” Charles said. “You never told me that you were the one to find Pryor.”

“You weren’t investigating until today,” Erik said. He sat down on the floor, cross-legged, on the black side of the board. “You never told me you were taking up with the police.”

“MacTaggert just asked me this morning.” He shrugged. “It was a quick start. But as I was saying, how did Angel know you, such that she knew to hire you? And why did you take the case free?”

Erik moved the white king’s pawn, then his own black one. “I believe the work day is over.”

Charles put the pieces back and opened with his knight instead.

“Really?” Erik moved his queen’s pawn.

“The work day may be over, but we’ve spoken of the case in conversation. So why not now?” Charles said. “Come on. You know I won’t let it go.”

“Don’t think I’m capitulating. The answer’s just so boring I know you’ll be disappointed,” Erik said, but he was talking. “We had a friend in common. And I was itching for something to do when she asked for my help.”

“A friend?” Charles said.

“No one you would know. Now, we’ve spoken of the case. Let’s move on. I won’t ask how your day was, because that’s a terrible question and I know how you spent your day.”

“A friend, Erik?”

“Come on. I at least know it takes two to make conversation.”

“…How was your day?”

Erik’s mouth twisted down. “I wasn’t being coy. That really is a terrible question.”

“Ah yes. A day away from you has made me forget: small talk is the bane of your existence.”

“The bane of all existence, really, Charles,” he said as he captured a pawn. “If there is nothing to say, then there should be no need to feel as though there is. Socialisation is a plague.”

“On all our houses, yes, but really, Erik, what do you suppose we’ve been doing?” Charles said.

“Arguing.”

“I beg to differ.”

Erik laughed. It was a wonderful laugh for something so seldom heard, and it made Charles smile down at the board.

 

X

Logan Howlett was a burly, hirsute man with a permanent scowl on his face. He looked like he might burst his starchy uniform with every flex of his muscle. His impressiveness was somewhat undermined by the fact that he was even shorter than Charles. He was probably three times as strong, though.

He greeted Charles in the lobby of the precinct. “Name’s Logan. I’ll be your guide today. First things first, reports through there,” he grunted. His voice was so low and gruff that virtually everything from his mouth was a grunt.

Logan, the leader of the squad that had found Pryor’s body. Perfect for the experiment Charles had in mind. “And I’d like to talk to you later too, of course,” Charles said.

The police were no less immune to gossip than the rest of Lockheed. Heads turned as they walked together to the records room, but Charles was an old hand at taking it in his stride and so, it seemed, was Logan. Charles sped up till he was quite a ways in front of Logan, reaching the door when Logan was still about ten meters away. He rattled the doorknob, forcefully enough that it was audible. “It’s locked.”

Logan grunted and made to turn back. “I’ll call Anson for the key.

“Wait, hang on,” Charles said. He rattled the doorknob a little more and opened the door. “No, it was just a bit jammed. I got it.”

Logan walked up, retrieved the files for him. Charles doubted they would hold anything he hadn’t gleaned yesterday, but it was good to be thorough. They walked past the heads again and Charles looked down at the files as though he was studying them.

“I don’t know how you got MacTaggert to babysit you yesterday,” Logan said, “but then, I don’t know how she got me to babysit you today. I’ll go with you to Grey House. After that, anything else—witnesses, locales—that’s up to you. On your own.”

Charles nodded. “I just need to make one stop before that. Pryor’s house is on the way, isn’t it?”

It was. They stepped out of the precinct and into the cruiser. As Logan started it up, Charles asked him about what happened when they’d discovered Pryor’s body, just as he’d asked Azazel and Bobby. Logan’s account barely differed at all. Charles even probed a bit for information about _your colleagues_ , but there was nothing to be gleaned there. Charles wasn’t too surprised. He wasn’t even that disappointed. He could get physical evidence for his locked room theory, which was looking more and more likely, at Pryde’s. For the remainder of the ride, Charles leafed through the reports. There was little of note, except—Pryor had met with Summers the day before she’d been killed.

“Why,” Charles said, a little angrily, “did no one mention this? That’s just ridiculous. The connection’s obvious now.”

“We only just found out,” Logan said, one hand on the wheel.

Charles shook his head and continued reading. They’d been spotted talking by the side of the road—the road to Grey House, in fact. No one ever went there, so the location would certainly have given their conversation some privacy—but then, Pryor’s house was even more remote. Had they been walking to Grey House, then?

A few pages later, there was another piece of potentially useful information: starting from the day Scott had met with Pryor, Alex Summers said that his brother was going out more often, and that these absences were unexplained. Alex had assumed that Scott was going on dates. Clearly, the first time had been the meeting with Pryor—but the others? Could Scott have been going to Grey House alone, following in Pryor’s memory?

Charles had just finished the file on Summers when they arrived at the Pryor’s house. “Do this quick,” Logan said as he killed the engine, and it was a quick stop. Logan stood just outside the room, arms crossed, as Charles examined the felled door. He checked the doorjamb and strike plate, and the dead bolt. Then he checked the latch bolt.

He smiled to himself. “Let’s go.”

“Though you saw the door yesterday already,” Logan said.

“Well,” Charles said as they descended the stairs, “I’ve a theory, rather elegant one. I just confirmed it.” He didn’t elaborate—not just because he wasn’t prone to explaining himself partway through an investigation, but also because it was a sensitive situation, lest there be an opportunity for the culprit to slip through his fingers.

They left the car at Pryor’s and walked the short distance to Grey House; navigating the winding roads on foot was less trouble than by car. In some ways, though, walking was more visible than a police cruiser, with Logan in uniform and Charles now clearly banded with the police. There were stares. Logan was unresponsive to Charles’ attempts at conversation, so it was something of a relief that they bumped into Erik and Angel just as they were walking the fringe of Lockheed.

Erik and Angel were deep in conversation when Charles and Logan came upon them, but Erik saw them before Charles could hear what they were talking about. “Charles,” he called out.

“Don’t mind me,” Logan said, low enough that Erik probably couldn’t hear.

“Wait,” Charles said. “I’d like to talk to them for a bit, if that’s alright. Erik did just greet me.

“Fine, Chuck. But hurry it up.” Logan made no move to approach Erik and Angel, seeming content to stand by the road, so Charles went on alone. The privacy that left them wasn’t unwelcome, in any case.

“Hello, Erik, Angel,” Charles said.

“Hey,” Angel said. “I gotta bounce, so let’s talk quick. You’re going to Grey House?”

“Yes,” Charles said. “The investigation demands it. Pryor spent so much time there. One glaring possibility is that she saw something there that made someone shut her up,” Charles said. That coupled with the fact that Pryor had met with Summers on the road to Grey House made it all the more likely. “What did she see? Or, maybe, what did she find?”

“Or what was she looking for?” Angel said seriously. “Maddie always talked about finding the Phoenix. Maybe she finally found it, after three years—and someone killed her for it.”

“Maybe,” Charles said.

“No, really,” Angel said. “I’ve told you she wasn’t crazy. Finding the Phoenix means something. If anything, it shows that this is connected to Jean Grey and the fires all those years ago.”

Fires, plural. Charles nearly forgot. The first fire Jean started, killing John and Elaine Grey; and then Jean’s presumed self-immolation seven years later.

“ _Phoenix_ was a name Jean took for herself,” Angel continued. “Lockheed just ran with it. It must mean something. Or at least, she took it from somewhere. And that’s what Maddie was trying to find.”

“You have a lot to say about this,” Charles said.

“She was my friend. And no one took her seriously.”

Not a close friend, she’d said. Yet Angel already had a whole scenario worked out in her head. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he promised. “You’ve thought it out well, even if you really only considered Pryor in isolation.” It fit, though, at least with Scott.

“You better,” Angel said. “Catch you later—and catch them, okay?”

“Of course.”

As she left, Erik took a step closer to Charles and said, “Now may I speak? How’s your investigation?”

“Quite well,” Charles said, thinking of the morning. “I think I’ve got the _how_ down. _Who_ is another question. And I can’t think of a consistent motive for all the three victims.” And Emma’s fingers—where had they gone?

Erik stared at him. “What have you been doing? You’re focusing on… inconsequential details."

“I wouldn’t say they’re _inconsequential_ ,” Charles said, defensive. “I’ve gathered how the crimes have taken place, the killer’s thought process—”

“Yet you haven’t said a word about your arsonists,” Erik said incredulously. “Angel’s right; this is almost certainly connected to the Grey fires. And that means the Hellfire Club is behind this.”

Charles froze.

He’d never mentioned the name _Hellfire Club_ to Erik.

“The ones who burned your home, killed your parents,” Erik continued, oblivious, “stole your sister!”

He’d never mentioned the name _Hellfire Club_ to anyone.

“I need to go,” Charles managed. His mind was whirring. He felt confused and a bit sick. “Grey House. I—I’ll see you later.” He walked off as quickly as he could, nearly stumbling twice as he did. He brushed past Logan without a sound, striding in the direction of Grey House. It felt like a replay of the first time he’d gone there, paying no mind to the road, lost in thought. Barraged in thought, this time, like the earth was pressing down on him.

He barely spared a glance at Grey House when he came to its monster front, marching straight through the shadow of the door and into the foyer.

“What’s the rush, Chuck?” Logan called after him.

Charles ran up the stairs.

The killer: equal parts control and rage, a dichotomised psychology. He was strong, determined, unflinching. He repressed his emotions and let them loose after the strangulations, laying havoc to the bodies with a vengeance. He was clever, enjoyed his symbolism, but his art was brutal and unsubtle. He was fearless—no, daring. He enjoyed the thrill. He enjoyed a challenge and challenging others—challenging Charles.

Wouldn’t it just be so like him to make the first move? To, immediately after committing murder the day Charles came into Lockheed, sit down and befriend him in person? And to offer Charles—who from the onset admired his cool and control, the vivid emotion simmering behind his eyes; half in love already—some of his laughter?

It was pitch black. There was only the slap of his shoes against stone and pounding blood in his ears. Gradually, he slowed to a walk, then a stop. He felt unsteady on his feet and braced himself against a stone doorway as he stared into the impenetrable darkness.

“Chuck?” A swathe of light swept the room: stone and dust, empty but for a rotting wooden cupboard in the corner.

Charles closed his eyes, but the darkness was gone anyway, so he opened them again as he turned towards the source of light. For a moment, Logan, his features lit and shadowed by the light, looked like he wanted to say something, but he only gave Charles a look and handed him a yellow torch without a word. Charles stared at it. Police-issue torch. He couldn’t remember if he’d seen Pryor’s red torch in the entryway or not. The police had probably taken it away.

“Pryor saw something here,” Charles said. “Maybe she even found something here, and we can find it.” If the—the killer hadn’t taken it away. “Or she might have left a message."

“Yeah, I got the memo,” Logan said. “We’re clue sniffing.”

Only Charles didn’t know where to start. He flicked the torch on and stared into the beam.

“We’ve shaken the place down already,” Logan said. “Barely any evidence that Pryor was here in the first place, and nothing she might’ve seen or found that someone would want gone.”

“Then it’s likely that that someone has already taken it upon himself to make gone,” Charles said, almost on automatic. He tried not to think about how someone might do that, but he knew he had to. “There’s nothing unusual at all? No rooms that stand out?”

“The whole place is emptied out. Has been for years. It’s all the same.”

He couldn’t very well search the whole house. Besides, the police had already done that for him. Square one. He meandered back down to the ground floor and found himself walking down the same passage of rooms he’d embarked on the first time. In the second room, he saw the oval mirror he’d seen before, and he stopped. He approached the mirror. The light reflected off its dusty surface and glanced off his eyes.

There were words on it.

Freshly written.

“Well, aren’t I lucky,” Charles murmured. “Another message from the ghosties, then? Don’t drown me tonight, please. But maybe you’re not the one I should be telling that to.”

The mirror only said, _HERE._ Like a rubbed off _THEY’RE HERE_. But less enigmatic.

“That sure as hell wasn’t here before,” Logan said.  

Charles lifted the mirror off the wall and examined it. He thought he caught a flash of red hair in it, but there was nothing red in the room to reflect it that way, and certainly no one with red hair. The mirror seemed perfectly ordinary. But Charles kept looking for something, anything, odd about it. He ran his fingers all along it, and after ten frustrating minutes, he found a catch. The mirror back popped open from the frame. There was a single sheet of paper inside.

_Cyclops, if you’re reading this, it’s not here. I’ve searched and searched, and I know for sure that it isn’t._

_If you’re Hellfire, suck it. You may have killed me, but as you will see, you’ll never find them._

_If you’re the police, you’re going to write this off as another one of my mad ramblings. Also, I’m fairly sure Emma Frost’s the one who’s killed me._

_And if you’re Phoenix. Find them._

_If you’re someone else, someone who wants to help, let me tell you the story. Well—the truth, undistilled. The first thing you have to know is that Jean Grey is innocent. Was innocent. She didn’t burn her parents, and she certainly didn’t burn herself. The second thing is that the true perpetrator is a group of arsonists, an organisation known as the Hellfire Club. They burned the Greys and much else besides. To this day, I don’t understand why they do what they do. Some people just get off on power, I guess. I think that’s what we call_ evil _. Anyway, the third thing is that Jean found them. After the fire, she was orphaned. She grew up and she grew strong, and when she was a teenager, she infiltrated their ranks. And let me tell you, to infiltrate an elite force of the cleverest, most unbelievable arsonists—that’s not an easy thing. That’s more than playing with fire, it’s leaping into the flame. To do that, Jean had to burn things too, but she saved the people. She spent three years compiling info on them. Her codename was Phoenix._

_You can’t save everyone, but Jean tried, and so it was inevitable when she was found out. Luckily, they didn’t know how far her sabotage went—they didn’t know about the files. And before anything else, Jean fled to Lockheed and hid them. Hellfire caught her in Grey House, and burned her. The files, though—now I know they’re not in Grey House, but it seemed logical then. I don’t know where they are._

_Find the Phoenix. Jean, the first, is dead, but it’s become a mantle been passed down to saboteurs of the Hellfire Club. When one dies, another arises. The Hellfire Club has pissed off a hell of a lot of people. But they’re more careful now—I’m sure that all the subsequent Phoenixes collectively haven’t compiled nearly as much as Jean did alone, never mind what happened when they too were found out. So find whoever’s the Phoenix now, and the both of you will have a better chance of finding those files._

And everything was clear.

Emma Frost’s missing fingers. The sheer brutality inflicted on the body, such that the face was bashed in beyond recognition. The body that remained had no face and no fingerprints.

How Frost had approached him that first day as a friendly face, mentioning his parents’ deaths right off, not being at the funeral, tantalising him with a hint of what had happened. The meeting set for a week later, whereupon she’d been ‘killed’.

How he hadn’t experienced Emma Frost’s death like he had Pryor’s and Summers’.

As he’d deduced, Summers had known the killer. Of course he knew Frost. He must have thought that Frost was on their side—Pryor and himself. She told him that she was in danger, faked her death, so they met up secretly, ostensibly to discuss the conspiracy. She’d been playing with her prey; in their final meeting, she’d drowned him.

As he’d virtually confirmed this afternoon: Azazel was the other Hellfire accomplice. When the squad found Pryor’s body, Azazel went ahead and tried the door. He said it was locked, so Logan kicked it in, but it had never been locked in the first place. So simple, so elegant—but it worked. Charles had checked that this morning at the station with Logan himself. After that, Azazel had stayed by the door so he could put the key in and lock it proper. This too Charles had confirmed, when he examined the door earlier that day—if the door had been locked, the deadbolt should have near torn apart the strike plate, not just the doorjamb. Instead, the strike plate only had scratch marks that matched the latch bolt, and, perhaps more tellingly, the deadbolt was totally undamaged.

It wasn’t Erik. God, he was a fool. His chest loosened.

But how had Erik known the Hellfire Club? Could he be another accomplice? Charles rejected the idea immediately, viscerally, but just minutes ago he’d been wondering if Erik was the killer. He couldn’t deal with that right now. There was something more immediate at hand.

He knew where the files were.

 _THEY’RE HERE_ , all down the Honey Room’s mirror.

 

XI

If Charles believed in ghosts, he would have noted that he had been haunted at both the Honey Room and Grey House, and found it significant. Charles did not believe in ghosts, he really didn’t—really, really didn’t. Really. But he noted it nonetheless. If he allowed himself to think on that a little more, that meant that the Honey Room had been important to Jean Grey.

He found the secret compartment easily enough, now that he knew what he was looking for, and the files fell out.

 

XII

He received no compensation for the case, and they did not catch the killers. Azazel vanished without so much as a trace, despite Charles’ carefulness in cornering him. But MacTaggert thanked him and he felt something warm in him that he had earned her respect.

He’d planned to stop by the Tempest Noon, but Angel found him first. “Good job.”

“You knew so much,” Charles said. “Too much. But I believe Pryor did not confide in you.”

She smiled. “So don’t blame Erik. I know he let something slip. The day you saw us, just before you figured everything out, I was dropping hints to him left and right.”

“Let me just say it: you’re the Phoenix.”

She nodded.

“You’re in Hellfire. Do you know—my sister—Raven Xavier—”

She gave him her card. _Tempest_ , it said, and a number. “I can’t exactly use the name _Phoenix_ out in the open. That’s my official codename in the Club. Call me later and I’ll see what I can do. You may be interested in meeting Mystique.”

“Were you—the PO Box…”

Angel cocked her head. “I’m… not sure what you’re talking about. Mystique might.”

“Hm.” A mystery for another day.

He turned back and went to Erik’s apartment, letting himself in when the doorbell went unanswered. He stared again at how bare the apartment was, save for the travel set still open on the coffee table and Charles’ things strung around. He waited for a good half hour, staring at the door, before finally getting on with it. He was packing his suitcase when Erik came in.  
  
“A case for the books, I suppose?” Erik said as he closed the door behind him and hung up his coat. “Conspiracies, secret societies, faked deaths…”

“Just one of each, really.”

Erik’s eyes flicked to the suitcase in Charles’ hand and back again. “…Are you leaving?”

“I have another lead. My sister, you know.” Angel had told him to stop by Westchester again. “…You could come with me.”

“I couldn’t.”

Charles paused. “Oh.” He tried to hide the disappointment in his voice.

“I have a lead of my own,” Erik said, toying with the black king. “Somehow, I doubt our paths will converge on these separate tails.”

Nazis and arsonists. Charles doubted it too.

“Well then.” Erik shifted and for the first time Charles found that Erik was avoiding his eyes. His voice was level, but rough. “This is where we part. Auf wiedersehen, Charles.”

Slowly, Charles closed his suitcase, still not fully packed. “Till next time, yes,” Charles said. “But for now, why don’t we have a game to tide us over?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> (Um, ending was totally rushed, but perhaps I'll return to fix that. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed.)


End file.
